INCANDESCENCE
by noking
Summary: In which Sherlock Holmes comes to terms with his true identity after being informed that he is a defective android. During his time in confinement, Sherlock wrestles with recollections of past experiences and details from his 'human' life. Future inclusion of other SHERLOCK characters. AU. Sherlock's POV.
1. Chapter 1

"Sherlock Holmes?"

Blackness. Swelling. Fluctuating. Filling ears. Filling mouth. Filling brain.

"Sherlock— I know you can hear me."

Thick black, oozing down throat. Into lungs. Into flesh. Into marrow.

"I'll have to make you, if you don't reply, Sherlock."

Cold black. No understanding. Only extinguished wicks, smoke rising slowly, thinly.

"Open your eyes now, and I will do no harm."

Eyes. Eyes. Eyelids. Like lead. Like soft, black lead. Will not open. Cannot open. Heavy. Heavy. Heavy black.

"I am sorry, then."

_click_

Then pain. Huge amounts. Tempers the black into steam, evaporation. Irritates the black into gas. Just white now. Cruel white. Stinging, hot. Not again. Not again.

"Did that loosen your tongue a little? Let me see. . . yes— an interesting one, you, Sherlock. Please look at me when I'm talking. That will require opening your eyes."

Soft black brushing. Slowly. Slowly. Open. Open.

Colours! Blinding. No— interesting.

"There. This is sight. Do you remember what that is? Seeing is the physical ability to analyse what your eyes are focused on, using your brain to translate."

Only one colour. Silver. No— two. And white. They are different. Correct.

"Seeing is the physical ability to analyse that which your eyes are focused on, using your mind. Silver. White. Hard—"

"No, Sherlock, you do not see hardness; you feel it. Touch is the physical ability to analyse what your skin is feeling, again, by use of the brain. Here, reach out. Touch this table."

Table. Flat. Raised. Long. Three feet by eight feet. Cold.

"Hard. Cold."

"Well done, Sherlock."

Blinking. Blinking. Sherlock? What?

"What is that."

"Sherlock— Holmes. That is your name. Your identification tag. I call you by your name and you respond."

"Sherlock respond."

"Responds."

"Responds."

"Good."

Chest convulses. Eyes jerk open wider. Wider. More. More light, more blindness, more sight, more seeing— cannot process at once. Too much. Too more. Too m ore ove r lo adin g. . .

_snap_

Like the contraction of a tautened spring, the contents of my skull coil back together. Each component comes howling into another, around another, a Russian doll of meaningless, important, tangible thought, intelligence, knowledge. Not of myself, but of what is. What exists. What does not. The rotundity of the planet exists. Toenails that continue to grow after one dies do not.

I exist.

Sherlock Holmes the 'it' does not.

Barbs of heat lacerate the flesh about the length of my spine and I slam backwards into my chair, not gasping; I can only gape wordlessly and sit through it; my wrists, I can feel, are bound behind me. The sensation ebbs to whispering hot tongues. I imagine clearly muscle melting onto bone.

"I should have warned you that might happen, Sherlock. The sudden memories. There are still things you will never know. These I have power over— I can choose to tell you, or not. And I shall, but only in return."

"In return for what?" I am irate. My tone is bitter and not loud enough.

I force blinks. My eyes are protesting against the prolonged exposure to the glaring lights of the white room. If I turn my head, I might understand that I have been surrounded by tall, Cyclopean lamps, placed just so as to eliminate the shadow from my every pore.

My head, my eyes, remain forward.

The person sitting in front of me is a man who is hairless all but for a grey moustache, a smear of graphite on the upper lip. He is dressed in white. His head and hands float because the white rest of him is one with the walls, the floor. He is of average mass. He is wearing rectangular glasses. They are perched on the end on his nose (long).

Now I have lost interest in him. I can smell the sharp tang of metal and of hot glass.

Man smiles widely causing Man's moustache to stretch.

I increase my guard without making as much obvious.

"For information, that is all. Now, we need to get to work with you, to begin with. With the real you. Have you seen yourself?"

I wonder if Man has been some form of personal image advisory in a past life, the way he refers to me as _the real_. I find every moment longer I have to listen to his odious voice tedious.

I make no response, though I apparently have told Man no: he says: Here.

"Here."

He pulls a large, square mirror from under the table and holds it up in front of me.

I study what I see and make no further advance. What I see is a male. Dark hair, not straight. Pale eyes, plus signs of heterochromia. Pronounced bone structure in the cheeks and jaw.

I am disdainful, and look away, bored.

Man discards the mirror to fold his fingers together.

"Confused?"

"No."

Man feels the need to continue, regardless.

"In your past life, you were indecisive, at best. This much we know. (I think, who are 'we'? and wish he wouldn't insist on maintaining this highly irritating air of riddle.) Your physical appearance, your name, your relationships— you had managed to trick yourself subconsciously into revealing what you truly are."

"The world's _only_ consulting detective." These words grate from my rough throat, automatically. I am parched.

"Incorrect."

I pretend to pay him attention. I sigh.

"Do tell."

"That sarcastic, dry tone coming back. Very good. One of your hallmark human characteristics. That said, you must know that you are _not human_. You are an android."

"Excuse me."

This is either becoming better or worse by the minute.

Man leans forwards, clasping his fingers. He is placid. I suppose I must look placid, to him. I am not.

I am cold.

"Beautifully crafted, if I may say. A creation such as yourself has the capacity to be programmed to become of whatever nature its owner so desires, with whatever memories are given to you to work with. You, however— Sherlock— are different. (He readjusts his glasses. I think he is a nervous individual under his unflattering show of substance.)

"Twenty years ago, you managed to bypass your obligation with your previous owner, as a virus was injected into your circuit, providing you with such stretch of mind that you could break your routine. We call it the OPEN virus. Whoever designed such a piece of malware was incredibly. . . light-footed about it— we have failed to trace it back."

Man is irritated.

Once again I find myself uninterested in him; he can only be lying. Common liars are not worth my efforts to stay awake.

"Your programme is immensely powerful and complex. You just do not yet know how to navigate it. You are only just starting out— your maximum potential might only be achieved when you subconsciously yearn for it, which you think is often, but is not. With training, you will be able to and will want to excel. That does not matter though. No one's going to teach you here."

"Good."

"You were never a human, Sherlock. You were created and programmed to serve one purpose— to be_ the most_ effective assistant in the schemes and plans of the governing authorities. You made all of that possible. Now, you have slipped from your fine-tuning, and unfortunately adapted to the life you think you lead. A consulting detective." Man smiles to himself and his shoulders rise once in silent mirth. "A very original title, by the way. However— you are no longer seen as effective, any longer. In fact. . . defective."

I think I am tired. Certainly not fresh enough to continue to listen to this. . . script.

"When am I to leave?"

"Leave? I'm sorry if you got that impression. You will never leave this place, Sherlock. You are dangerous as well as uncommon. If left to completely mold yourself into human society the outcome we predict would be. . ." Man's verbal explanation is substituted by a gesture with his floating hands. _Undesirable_, is the impression I get. "In any case, you have valuable information that—"

"Not my concern." I move to stand up, but I know the bindings around my wrists will stop me.

Man touches his finger to a button in the table and a shock shivers through me, as it had before and before that.

I open my mouth and a coil of smoke extends from my tongue. I half think it might shrink back into my mouth in the way I had previously felt the two hemispheres of my brain crash together.

I slump back onto my bound hands.

"It will be, Sherlock Holmes." Man's lips stretch, the balanced graphite bristles above with them. "It will be."

* * *

END PHASE: 1


	2. Chapter 2

Sherlock let himself experience what he might have thought if he believed his apparent situation; it was this:

* * *

It was indefinable. The indefinable truth.

It was the indefinable truth, defined. By a moustachioed Man— an American, in his way of going about things, at least— and an almost seamless location, one concrete sleeve of a corridor down which Sherlock was now finding himself being escorted along.

I am not me: I am myself, but I lack in the areas I thought I had.

Sherlock jerked his wrists slightly. Bound, still. The tight metal of the weighty handcuffs disagreed with his skin and gnawed at it, like the jaws of an empty dog.

So, he felt pain. He could feel pain. Yet who designs a robot who can feel pain? Who troubles themselves with the science of artificial sensory cells, neurons— sensory, relay, pyramidal? Who chooses to weaken a brilliant mind with the ability to hurt? And his mind?— yet another figment of his 'imagination'?

How needlessly ironic this all was proving to be. Was he to believe that his brain was just a very clever example of instrumental design? A toy disguised as a 'consulting detective', a non-existence.

He was a toy.

He should love to meet his creator, his seller, his owner.

So much the better if all three were one.

* * *

And now, he thought, let me work my way out of this one.

On my left and right sides I am blocked by walls. In front and behind of me, I am blocked by men. Above me the ceiling is unbroken by ventilation openings. Below me is similar: the floor is as concrete as the walls and are implanted with no manholes, trapdoors, or other potential solutions to my problem. I have memorised every single turning and door since I was ordered from the white room by Man, and have even, at every point possible, taken the opportunity to estimate how far an adjoining corridor might extend away, what might lie behind a locked door, the pattern of the complex's routes. The design flaw of a high security building intended to keep things _in _will often be its predictability and will only help things _out. _

Sherlock thought, repetition and lack of imagination should be reconsidered in such places. The best place to hide treasure is in a labyrinth, and leave Theseus no string.

Now on either side of him were cells. Set back in the walls, they appeared two-dimensional. They owed it to the light delivered by stark strip-lamps overhead. They flickered and gave the impression of buzzing, though Sherlock could hear no sound; the cell's front walls were sheets of thick glass. Tinted. He judged it at three inches.

Each holding chamber contained a person.

Or only what looks like one, he presumed.

Some of them also didn't look like one. An unclothed male with only half of a face watched the space between his own feet. Did he hope for it to open up and swallow him? Despite his disfigurement— a bared, dense network of wires and cyber-structure from the top of his shaved skull to his left hand— the still-human part of his face looked calm.

In the neighbouring cell, a woman. Dark-skinned, wide-nosed and -lipped. She was a portrait of rage, painted into motion. Over and over she was butting her shoulder into the glass wall of her prison, slapping her hands against it, gnashing and pouring clear liquid from her eyes.

Is it salt water or petrol, he wonders wryly.

Beyond the sights of the corridor, at its end, stood a steel door. Vulgar, yellow lettering was stamped across it:

CAUTION: UNSTABLE SPECIMENS - AUTHORIZED PERSONNEL ONLY

Sherlock smiled.

Definitely Americans.

* * *

END PHASE: 2

* * *

_AN/ Thanks for reading- reviews are always welcome!_


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